


Brewer's Boy

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [45]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Consistent Christianity, Found Family, Gen, Liquor!, Minor Character Backstory, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-17
Updated: 2017-09-17
Packaged: 2018-12-31 01:03:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12121155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: Aramis' father was a brewer.  His mother was... not.  There's a story there.





	Brewer's Boy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).



> This is a guest work in Thimblerig's excellent _The Lion and the Serpent_ series. She very kindly invited me to expand out a story I'd sent her a snippet of and incorporate into the series canon. (And acted as a reference source and wrote the first draft of the Simonides section because I was a stuck.) Thank you!

**The Fore:**

Le M’sieur lit a candle in the stillness of a night, brought out his brassware and admired the gleam, uncorked the jug of vinegar he used to clean it and sniffed appreciatively.  He had always liked to start these little jobs after his first sleep – like sex and prayers, it went better when the mind was in a properly reflective state.  He sprinkled salt into his smallest alembic and started to scrub.

There was a hammering at the door and the brewer opened it to a young man, his hair and eyes wild.  “M’sieu,” his visitor said, his voice sounding just a little panicked.  “I was going to sleep in your barn, greet you at a civilised hour – but I saw the light…”

Le M’sieur clucked his tongue.  “Aramis, Aramis, Aramis.  You will always have a welcome here.  Here, fetch me that barrel of the wine from the shelf.  Old bones, you know.  Old bones.”  The boy, as of old, answered to good natured bullying where a touch of kindness would spring him into catlike wariness.  “It’s been a long time since you’ve come home to tell me of your travels and travails.  Too long, mon fils.  So sit down and tell me all about it.”

Aramis let out a long sigh.  “M’sieu d’Herblay, I…”

“I am your _father,_ Aramis.”

“I… M’sieu.  Father.  Everything has gone wrong.”

_Amiens, The Moon-and-Venus, very long ago._

“Give the boy to me,” Jean d’Herblay said suddenly. 

Josefina, prized whore of the Moon-and-Venus brothel, snapped her head around.  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said sniffily.

It was morning, and the ladies of the establishment were taking the air in the quadrangle gardens.  There were fruit trees there, pears and apples hanging gravid on the tree, and d’Herblay inspected them with professional interest – what wine might one make of these fruits grown solely for their ornamentation?  He was an honoured guest of the establishment, permitted to walk about in the day; rarest of all, allowed to meet the children of the women who worked there.  Ahead of them, two youngsters, one dark, one fair, the eldest not quite ten, promenaded hand in hand. 

“Give the boy to me.  He’s too bright to grow up a pimp’s assistant.  Too pretty to be here at all, really.”

Josefina walked steadily on, her hand on his arm.  Away from the romance of candles, her pallor was stripped bare to the world.  Even so, two bright spots appeared on her cheeks.  “And what would you make of him, M’sieur le Brasseur?”

“What he wishes to be.  Honest work if he would have it.  I have enough Latin to keep his education up –“ she smiled snarkily at that, ah, to know a woman who could guess at a complicated story without needing it spelled out for her – “my sponsorship to buy him a place in the church if he desires it.”

She turned her head to him, languid; the Spanish Lady had always had the carriage of a noblewoman, each gesture a sublety of grace and sardonic wit for those who could see it, her hair a thick braid the colour of a moonless night.  She had her own complicated story he could guess, a closed book he would likely never have a chance to read.  “What is it about you churchmen?” she said, dourly.  “You’re the second offering to buy my son this week.”

He held up his hand in a caution: “Ex-churchman, please.  A lady of the night who can quote Catullus – how might one resist, my little sparrow.  I cannot speak for your other patrons, my Lady.  But I would try to be a good father to your boy.”

Josefina drew herself up, all high bred arrogance, and called her son to her.  “René, begin: _Si linguis hominum loquar…?_ ”

The boy bowed, eyes as dark and intelligent as his mother’s: “Maman.  _Si linguis hominum loquar, et angelorum, caritatem autem non habeam, factus sum velut æs sonans, aut cymbalum tinniens._ Though I speak with the tongue of men, or of angels, if I have not love, I am but a sounding brass, or a ringing cymbal.”  He nodded at d’Herblay.  “Good morning, M’sieu.”

“Very good, René.  Continue to _omnia sustinet_.”

The boy quirked his eyes at his mother, but continued obediently: “…love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Josefina interrupted, and took her son firmly by the shoulder.  “You may come again tomorrow,” she told d’Herblay.  “This evening I find I am quite indisposed.”

***

In the harsh light of the morning, she gripped her son by the shoulders, so tight that he could see René wincing.  D’Herblay remembered the old ways, when a child witness would be given a buffet on the ear to help him remember the things that mattered.  “Remember this, boy,” Josefina said fiercely.  “We know in part, and we prophecy in part, and when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away.  _Remember_.”

“Yes, maman.”

“Now forget this place. Forget where you came from. Forget you ever had a mother.  _You are no longer my son._ "

**The Heads:**

D’Herblay sniffed the collecting jar.  The foreshots were well gone, the poisons that exhaled from the first distillation discarded as they ought, but what dripped from the still kept the bitterness of the first heads.  He poured the liquid into a white pottery beaker – a little would give bite to his brandy, and the rest, well it could always go around again.

“I went to visit Maman, did you know?”  Aramis said, his eyes still wild. 

“She was a lovely woman,” Jean said peaceably.

“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” Aramis said bitterly.  “ _Why_ did you not tell me my mother had died?”

“Your mother was a complicated woman.” Ah, there it was faint under the bitterness, the bright smell of true brandy.  He switched collecting jars, adjusted the fire keeping his still going… one must be patient.  At last he went on, “I fancy she liked the idea of herself as young, beautiful, vivacious for ever.  In her child’s eyes if no one else’s.”

_Picardy, a long time ago._

By the time they reached home, it was full dark and the boy had fallen asleep against his shoulder, whether unmoved or lulled by the rocking of the cart one could not say.  D'Herblay picked him up and carried him to the room he himself had slept in as a child, the boy too exhausted to stir even through a hurried bed making.

In the morning, he was sitting down to a light repast of coffee and bread when his neighbour came by.  “Ah, Madame Babineaux, how good to see you,” he said.

“M'sieu,” she said warmly.  Her daughter, Isabelle, bobbed a courtesy.  “How was your trip?  Was business good?”

“It was excellent, good Madame.  As you see, I have some coffee to share with my good friends and–” he gestured at the stairs where a shadow lurked “- my son has come home to live with me.  Here is some breakfast, René.”

“I prefer Aramis,” the boy said quietly.  His face was pale and his eyes dark shadows.

“Madame and Mademoiselle Babineaux, I present to you my son, Aramis René d’Herblay.”

He cut off a large doorstop of bread and spread it with some precious conserves.  "Here you are... Aramis.  Perhaps Isabelle would show you the garden."  When they had left, he looked confidingly at Madame Babineaux.  “This is a matter of some delicacy, my dear friend - Aramis has come to live with me because his mother is gravely ill.  I think, perhaps, Josefina does not wish him to think of her as dying...”

Jeanine, his kindly, sensible, _practical_ friend, her hair already touched with grey, touched his hand.  “I will be kind.”

Outside, Aramis looked dubiously at rural life.  The house was a large one, but fallen on hard times; the garden looked as though it may have been built for pleasure - there was a small fountain with a statue of a slightly strangled fish held up by a naked boy, and some winding paths - but it had also just as clearly been turned over to work.  Vegetable patches stood foursquare next to herb gardens, the bushes showing the depredations of a man who used their scented leaves in his employment, who had not the time to leave them to ornament his world.  Marigolds grew everywhere, tucked around the borders, and filling up the empty spaces of the earth.

"I have a mother," Aramis said proudly to the girl.  Her hair was fair and fine, airy wisps escaping from her tightly pinned cap.  "I have a mother and she is very beautiful and very wise."

**The Hearts:**

It was time to make the cut between the bitterness of the heads and the brightness of the hearts.  He let the slow drip fill the beakers as the little room filled with the richness of the liquor he was exhaling out of the low wine.

“M’sieu,” Aramis started.

“Père,” Jean corrected, patiently as ever.  “Your hands know how to do the work.”  The boy, without particularly thinking, began to help fill beakers and stoke the fire.

_Picardy, long ago._

The family columbier was larger than one might expect.  Not for the d’Herblays a small dovecote tucked into the wall of the stables – in his family’s time in the sun, one of his grandfathers had built a small monumental house for the birds, the high sides curving into a round dome roof with a small opening in the apex for the birds to enter.  He ducked inside the small door and gestured the boy inside. 

The pigeons clucked and whirred at him and he smiled, clucked back, and sprinkled some grain.  One white dove judiciously pecked some grains from his hand, then flew aloft to the opening to the sky.  “You like these birds,” the boy said, watching the ascent.

The brewer nodded.  “They make good shit.”  Aramis turned to him, eyes startled.  “One of your jobs will be to clean this, turn it into good dirt, and put it around the fruit trees.  Never be afraid to work with your hands, my son, for it is the path to humility.”  The boy nodded solemnly, so he went on.  “Our Lord Jesus was a carpenter.  He was a carpenter who was a friend to prostitutes and tax collectors.  When you work with your hands, when you are kind to those in humble life, you are but one step from God.”

“You speak like a churchman, M’sieu,” Aramis said accusingly.

“Some might say that I do.”

“And you’re not a churchman.”

“Ah, my boy, there is a story and a story.  La! My father protested – your older brother is dead, if you go to the church, to whom the patrimony?  Ah!  My mother wailed – who will give me grandchildren?  So I went to Douai, to pray and to find my vocation, and at the last it failed me.  And what do you say to that, young Aramis?”

“I don’t know.  Why?”

“As our Saint of Hippo might say, `da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo’.  I could not put aside the desires of the flesh, though yet my soul yearned for salvation.”

“You like to fuck Maman.”

“Among other things.  Here, hold these,” he picked out two of the fatter birds, wrung their necks and handed the dead pigeons to Aramis.  “I will show you a good way to cook them.  A body might survive on pottage, but a soul must live!”

***

On the evening of the first day, he showed Aramis where to draw water for a bath and left him to it.  He was drinking a nightcap in his parlour when the boy came to him.  Josefina had dressed her son in a nightshirt of the best linen – brilliant white, with lines of starlings embroidered around the cuffs and collar.  She was a woman who wanted the world to know that her son was cared for.

“Good night, M’sieur d’Herblay,” Aramis said carefully.

Jean put his thumb in the book and closed it.  “Good night, Aramis, sleep well.  I will see you at breakfast.”

“Yes, M’sieu.”

In the still watches of the night, between his first and second sleep - the best time to pray, Jean d’Herblay heard the boy’s door open.  A silent presence watched him as he knelt and told the beads of his rosary over, disappeared again before his time to rise and seek his own bed.

***

“Once upon a time,” Jean said, his small sharp pruning knife working carefully at the dry grape plants.

“Once upon a time,” Aramis repeated obediently, gathering up the sticks that dropped.

“Once upon a time there was a man, Simonides, who went to a feast in a great hall. Halfway through the banquet, the good food, the better wine, the best company, he was called out into the cool of the evening by a pair of brothers who wanted to thank him for his work.”

“Alright,” said the boy, his eyebrows furrowed quizzically.

Jean squinted up into the sun, bright despite the coolness of the day, then back to his work.

“La, the gods were with old Simonides, for as he turned back the feasting hall collapsed, killing everyone who remained inside. He alone escaped to tell of it.”

Aramis looked at him suspiciously. He picked up another pruned branch.

“The next day, when they dug out the rubble, they asked Simonides to identify those left behind and he tried, lad, he tried. But in the dust and the broken stone all the - well. All the bodies looked the same.  And Simonides grieved a little more, for losing their names.”

“I don't like this story, M’sieu,” Aramis said austerely.

“Ah, but then, young Aramis, the man remembered the night before, all the merriment and good company. He closed his eyes and summoned up the hall living in his memory. He walked around it, in the space behind his eyes. As he passed each friend, each in their order around the table, the one with red hair that curled like lamb’s wool, another who licked his lips between each sip of wine, the bright-eyed lady that poured the drinks, as he passed each one in his mind he touched the body they had left behind in the solid world so that the searchers might give them back their names.  That God might find them at the end of days.”

He glanced to the side. The boy was staring at him, solemn, his arms wrapped around the dry sticks.

“It was a solemn thing that Simonides did, and a joyful one: remembering the dead. But he learned something of it, also.  He gained a tool.” Jean cut more branches and handed them to the boy. “We use language to pray to God and also to discuss our daily affairs; water to drink and water to bless. So, after the burying, Simonides kept the tool he had been given - a way to remember things.

“If you build a house behind the eyes, and as you walk around it, add a thing of something you wish to remember, it will stay with you. It might be as holy as the Stations of the Cross, or as simple as a grocery list: God wanted us to live in the world and so we do.

“So attend, boy, summon up a place you know well, and some things you want to remember.”

“The garden, M’sieu,” said Aramis, his chin tilting up oddly stubborn. “Where I used to play with Pauline.  Maman used to read to us there.”

“Alright.  When you are ready, boy, you may call me Père.”

**The Tails:**

D’Herblay sniffed the latest beaker and wrinkled his nose.  The watery dregs were appearing, as always, with the bleakness of dawn, to be revealed for what they were and thrown into the next batch, that they might try to ascend again.  “Tell me what ails you, my son.”

Aramis knelt, his eyes closed, his hands folded as in prayer.  “Father, I have brought women to treachery and death.  There is a child – ” his voice cracked “ – there is a child I have brought ill to.  My child.”  A shudder racked through the boy, and d’Herblay touched his head in benediction.

“Isabelle found her own vocation, my dearest love.  As for the rest, well, in my father’s house there are many mansions, and a place is prepared for them.  At the end of days you will find us all.”

Aramis took one last desperate breath and stood to kiss him.  His son nodded, squared his shoulders, and walked out the door into pale light.

_Paris, two years ago._

As he left his house of memory, Aramis stood in a moment of perfect serenity and of love.  His body remained in the cell, but his soul was free.

“Father,” he said.  “Father, forgive my trespasses as I forgive...  As I forgive…”  He stood and began yanking the chains around his wrists.  “ _God!”_ he shouted.  “God, if you spare her and by some miracle, I'm allowed to live, I vow to devote all my remaining days to your grace.”  He pulled as hard as he might against the fast chain, would his hands come off his arms first?  He began again:  “ I will renounce all worldly temptations. I will - even my duty.”  A breath and a breath.  “I am not worthy of your mercy.”  _Father_ , he thought.  “My soul is prepared.”

The door, the real door, opened.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m using the method of making brandy as described here: http://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/home/home-distilling-zw0z1212zmat.aspx Commercial brandy is made from grapes, but really you can use any kind of low alcohol fruit wine. The ‘foreshots’ and ‘heads’ are the first liquids that comes out of the condenser and are high in acetone, to be discarded or, for the heads, have a little bit added to the final mix if you want it. The ‘hearts’ is the good stuff that comes next and is your brandy. The final tranche of liquid is called the ‘tails’ and should also be discarded (or kept with the heads to be mixed into the next batch). More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot_still 
> 
> First and second sleeps: There’s been a fair amount of research that prior to gas and electric lighting, many people would naturally wake up in the middle of the night and might use that time to think mellow thoughts, have sex, read a book, or do some brewing. http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/sleepcommentary.html 
> 
> Amiens - I didn’t see any particularly clear factoids on where the brothel Aramis grew up in was, but it fits in with some other series details to make it a regional hub rather than Paris itself, somewhere ‘up north’, so Amiens it is.
> 
> “M’sieur le Brasseur” – If Google Translate serves me right, she called him Mr Brewer.  
> “when a child witness would be given a buffet on the ear” – I’m too lazy to look up a reference, but I remember this from (I think) an introduction to the Song of Rolend. In the Medieval period where documentation was difficult, important events like marriages and treaties relied on people remembering them. It was a Thing to fetch a kid in to watch (who could be expected to live a longish time), then thwack them around the head as a reminder.
> 
> It's tricky finding much info about breakfast in the early 17th century because it was a very unfashionable meal, as far as I can tell it was mostly reserved for children, the ill and manual workers who couldn't be expected to last until dinner at midday. But those who could get coffee would have that, and I figure d'Herblay would consider getting the 'good' stuff one of the other highlights of his trips into town.
> 
> Pigeon dung – so my reference for columbiers (on Wikipedia) includes that dovecotes were kept in part for producing fertiliser, and modern pigeon fanciers do so – but take precautions, especially around wild birds which are likely to have diseases. http://www.compostthis.co.uk/pigeon-waste
> 
> “to whom the patrimony?” - _Le Patrimoine_ , literally the legal inheritance of land and money, but in a much larger sense the cultural traditions of one’s family, region and country. (A very big deal in France.)
> 
> So, I’m doing a lot of quoting in this story, both of Christian texts and Greek and Roman Classics – this was a highly in period practice, educated people obsessively quoted the ‘masters’ at each other to demonstrate that they had a good understanding. And herewith, some sources:
> 
> “A lady of the night who can quote Catullus – how might one resist, my little sparrow.” – There’s a fairly famous Latin poet called Catullus, who wrote a couple of poems about his girlfriend’s pet sparrow – or maybe… his penis. Because that’s how the Roman’s rolled. http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e2.htm, http://rudy.negenborn.net/catullus/text2/e3.htm 
> 
> “Si linguis hominum loquar “ The opening line of 1 Corinthians 13. http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/vul/co1013.htm An English translation is here: https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/1co/13/1/s_1075001 
> 
> "da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo" – “Give me chastity and continence, but not quite yet.” S. Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 8.7.17. http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/conf/text8.html, http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/augustine/conf.pdf I highly recommend reading the Confessiones – Augustine is one of the great thinkers of the medieval Church, but also he can be quite funny and was an astute psychologist. One of the gems is his recounting of how his Dad caught sight of him at a key moment in a bath house and went home chortling that he was definitely going to be a grandfather (3.6). The mind boggles at how embarrassing this must have been.
> 
> Memory palaces were first attributed to Simonides of Ceos: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simonides_of_Ceos They’re a technique to hang anything you particularly want to remember onto your spatial memory. This was super useful in pre-literate societies, and is still used by ‘memory masters’ today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci
> 
> “in my father’s house there are many mansions, and a place is prepared for them” – From John 14:2: https://www.blueletterbible.org/kjv/jhn/14/1/s_1011001


End file.
